Can I just tell you how happy I am that the Sox do not have another game in the middle of the night until the end of May? Of course there are FIVE then, but at least some of them are over a weekend.

Doing Opening Day (since it was the 1st game I saw this year, it was Opening Day to me) in the middle of the night, is all kinds of weird. Surprisingly, I made it until the 7th inning–usually I fall asleep around the 4th…

Well, Daisuke did much better than I expected, going 6 2/3 and only throwing 96 pitches (61 for strikes), striking out 9 and walking none. He only gave up 2 hits (including 1 homer) during that span…From Daisuke: “It would have been nice to have been able to have pitched like this back at the Tokyo Dome…Last time, I was a bit cautious going into the game, but today I felt I was able to approach the game very naturally, without over thinking it…I had good velocity on my harder stuff and my breaking balls were also very good. If I could take this as the average and go forward, it would be good.” Let’s hope this is an indication of good stuff to come….

Great way fro Jason Varitek to break out of his horrendous 0-15 (with 9 strikeouts–yikes!) hit a ground rule double that should have been called a homer–which scored Youkilis on 3rd base for what would be the game winning run…

Well, at least people cannot complain that the Sox win World Series because they have the 2nd highest payroll. The Skanks are still in 1st with a Staggering $209+ million for 2008, but then Detroit and the Mets are 2nd and 3rd with $138+ million. The Sox come in 4th with $133,440,037.000, which is actually about $10 million less than last year. The lowest payroll? The Marlins with $21.8 million–and the 2nd lowest is Tampa Bay with more than TWICE that at $43.8 million. $21 million? If there were Marlins fans, I bet they would be majorly PO’ed that they ownership cares enough to do the very least…

With his errorless game last night, Kevin Youkilis tied Steve Garvey’s major league record for most consecutive games at first base without an error…Garvey set the 193-game streak from June 26, 1983 to April 14, 1985, while playing for the Padres…

Looks like Josh Beckett will be facing Doc Halladay on Sunday, for the final game of the Toronto Series. He did very well in his final rehab yesterday morning, going 5 strong, throwing 64 pitches (47 for strikes_ and allowing only 2 hits (including a homer) and the 1 run, while striking out 6 and walking none…Why are they not waiting the 1 more day (as Monday is an off-day) and having him pitch the home opener?? That would make perfect sense…

When Josh is activated, and Timlin as well, two of the follow 3 bullpen guys will be going: David Aardsma, Bryan Corey, and Javier Lopez. And the problem is, everyone is out of options. So there is a good possibility that if any of them are put in waivers, they will be claimed by another team–I think their performance over the next couple of games will be very telling–and the 2nd man out will have more time to prove himself, as Timlin is still about 10 days out…

Coming up: The travel day, which means the game starts early–3:35pm to be exact–which means I miss the 1st 3-4 innings. Jon Lester and Rich Harden get the starts in a rematch of last week–hopefully the Sox will fare better against Harden this time around…